Will the extra RAM kill the Lag? (WOW)

Hi

I play WOW for about a month now, I have a Fujitsu N3510 and have 1.73Ghz CPU, 512MB RAM, ATI X300 graphic card, 60GB 4200RPM drive.
When I solo, I can play the game very smoothly, constant, 40-60FPS, but then when I see other player running around like in Ironforge or other big city, it will lag forever (1-20FPS).
I know I have a slow harddrive, but I don't want to change harddisk, so will I get 1GB RAM or even 2GB RAM helps a lot. Or I really need to get RAM and harddrive in order to kill the lag.

 

Well, generally the more ram the better. It will definitely kill some of the lag, but the lag may seem to stem from a combination of a couple of things. You video card isn't all to great, more ram would definitely help, and so will a faster hard drive, but it could also be your connection speeds, since you say playing solo is fine, but multiplayer is a totally different story. It could be that all those characters on screen may be too much for your network or computer to handle seeing as your video card isn't the greatest.

 

Yep, upgrading to 1gb will help quite a bit with the problem you're having. I had 512 on my desktop and lagged in every city. Dropped another 512 in and it was smooth sailing.

 

i wouldnt bother jumping all the way up to 2 gig 1 gig will be enough evan for wow theres a big difference in performance when going from 512 to 1 gig but the difference is much smaller when jumping to 2 gig from 1 gig, if that make sense.

 

I somehow change the game resolution to my naive resolution on my computer, it access the harddisk much lesser and didn't have as much lag in group. But I don't know why it is like that?

I used to play 800*600 (something like that), now I play 1280*780 (something like that)

Any thought?

 

my poor bro is trying to get by with a 32mb graphics card and 256mb ram and a 2.2ghz p4 (he has inspiron 8200) it doesn't work to well and he to is looking to add some ram possibly. For the most part though he gets by.

 

using 2gig in a system is pretty much senseless (atleast in the games sector).. check out this thread, How do 2 GB RAM improve the system?
conclusion is that 512 are not enough, 1gb is perfect .. anything more is not necessary atleast not for games if you're doing 3d rendering or working with high dpi images in photoshop more might be necessary..

 

Disagreed. I used to have 1GB of RAM in my notebook. While idle, I used about 350MB of memory. During gaming, I noticed studdering, espeically in Quake 4 and BattleField 2. Doom 3 also used more memory than I had. Since I upgraded to 2GB, I have had zero studdering. There is a difference. If you are a hardcore gamer, 2GB is recommended.

 

hmm. that's interesting, 1gb should be more than enough for a game to be loaded into memory. then you might have had or still have a badly adjusted page file. another guess i'd drop in would be that you had a totally fragmented harddrive.
i really can't think that of a game would conserv more than 700mb of memory at once.. really, atleast not today.
try it, load a memory-hogging game like battelfield 2 or fear, then - ingame - press ctrl+alt+del and open the taskman, switch to active process view so you can check the memory used by the process.
well, atleast i can assure you that your loading times and your fps won't increase by the memory upgrade.
i'm also a bf2 player and i don't expierence any (non network related) lags ingame (once all data has been cached ofcourse)
as a conclusion, you can't break down things like this that easy- every system is different, everybody has other programs installed, other applications running - stutters ingame might have tons of reasons.. rule #1, disable any antivirus applications while playing games

 

No, I keep my notebook fully tuned up...I do a small tune up every two days (defrag), and once per week, a full one, using registry cleaners, file vacuums, defrag, defrag boot files, etc. So, there is no problem there.

As for the page file, that was not poorly adjusted - had it set to 1GB minimum.

BattleField 2 is one game that will use more than 1GB...that I can assure you of. I also upgraded my Pentium 4 Desktop's memory to 2GB of Corsair XMS because of that game. The page file was in active use in Quake 4, FEAR, and Battlefield 2 with 1GB.

True - I didn't get any FPS increase. The game just smoothened out. My lag was quite apparant (not my Internet) with 1GB - studdering every few seconds, not a huge thing, just a small jump.

Yep - always disabled/unloaded all of my AV/AS apps before my games.

I'm not taking any of what you said as an offense by the way.

 

1GB is enough to play games today. But...

512 -> 1GB = speed+
1GB -> 2GB = smooth+

I have 2GB RAM. I actually get a bit better 3dmarks with 1GB! But the difference is too small to rule out 2GB as a generally good thing to have (if you can afford). 1GB will give you decent gameplay, with no or very little stuttering (or studdering? ) (especially if you have like tons of background services), 2GB will make sure that even that is gone.
I actually need 2GB for my job (not gaming) - like ten apps open with many things that need to be done in each. Allocation is around 1,4 GB max. After while disk is completely silent. Not a single access (until I load a new doc or save something of course). 2GB is twice more expensive. So that is another thing that people take into consideration.

I personally think that more than 1GB today is just starting to be a better solution. I'm sure there will be a game that will need extra 100, 200, 300 MB of RAM. So sooner or later one would need more RAM.

Another thing - when I was buying my new laptop, I instantly took 2GB, and 5400 60GB disk (I also have 2.5" 80 GB external). I personally think that lots of RAM can easily boost performance of a notebook even with a very slow disk. Also disk is mechanical thing that uses a lot of energy for its work. RAM is more effective in terms of work on a notebook, if you know what I mean. Once loaded in RAM - it is silent fast machine. I would like to have a RAM disk - at least for OS. That would be nice to have on a notebook.

 

the best setup for a pagefile is the same size minimum and the same size maximum so your OS wont have to adjust it manually which causes stutter..
battlefield eating more than 1gb?!? i'll check that right now..
oh and, sorry, i really didn't mean to offend you!

edit; so i checked, and battlefield does not consume more than 600mb for me (but every map differs ofcourse). i was ingame on a server with everything loaded into memory:

and as you can see i'm running a terrible amount of services and i still don't recieve stutt(dd)ers while ingame once everything has been cached.

but you are right, hardcore gamers that can't a few stutters during the caching process (level transistions, weapon picked up etc.) should go for the 2gb.

studdering every few seconds?? that sounds terrible, can't believe that you had such stutters with 1gb and a x700, but well, every laptop is totally different, every os is it's own nasty environment...

 

Buy a 1GB stick now, and save the 2nd purchase until it has real benefit.

Though if you do wait for buying a second stick, make sure the first one is name brand so it's easy to find and dual channel your RAM.

 

Check this article about optimal memory amounts in today's and older games.

Cheers,